


From The Mouth Of An Injured Head

by crocodilepatronus



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Mental Institution, Canon Disabled Character, Depression, Happy Ending, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Suicide Attempt, soft brocore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 06:06:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4049053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crocodilepatronus/pseuds/crocodilepatronus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Bucky is a psych ward patient. Steve is serving a community service sentence. Bonding over Robert Frost ensues. tw mental health issues and suicide attempt/references</p>
            </blockquote>





	From The Mouth Of An Injured Head

**Author's Note:**

  * For [becausemagnets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/becausemagnets/gifts).



Bucky wished his room had locks on it. Obviously it wouldn’t. A mental facility could not function if the patients could lock themselves in their rooms. Maybe he wanted them because not having them was a constant reminder that he was in a mental facility. Another way in which his personal liberties had been forsaken. Just like the orderly who stood guard outside the shower who told him when he’d been in long enough. If he didn’t respond when they told him to get out they’d come into the room and shut the water off and physically remove him (the bathroom doors didn’t have locks either). He knew because he’d tested it.

He couldn’t have shoelaces either. Or writing implements that weren’t crayons. Even the crayons had to be returned at the end of the day.

Bucky’s therapists told him in dulcet, neutral, tones that he had to cultivate his autonomy and begin to foster a sense of self and individuality. They cut out and removed the draw string on his sweat pants, though. They also told him he had to start seeing his body as more than just a tool or a shell for others to control. And then they chastised him because he didn’t want to take the blue pills that made his hand twitch. They told him he had to be his own person now, that he couldn’t punish himself for past mistakes or things other people told him made him worthless. The one window in his room had bars on it.

Bucky had no delusions that the ‘safe’, white, disinfectant scented world on the “inside” was any different than the rust stained, frost bitten, garbage scented, world “outside” that he was supposed to be recovering from. It was just brain washing with a different goal in mind. It didn’t mean it wasn’t still brain washing.

But Bucky had a lot of techniques (supposedly they were bad) to help. And one of them was the locks on the door. He’d sit on his bed and people would wander in and out of his room endlessly throughout the day. Sometimes they’d make him leave the room. Mostly they tried to… ‘engage’ him. In conversation. Or even eye contact. Any signal that he was functioning on their plane of reality. He wasn’t. He was drowning them out and thinking about if the door to his room was covered in chains and padlocks and surrounded by a moat and fortified with steel melded around the edges.

He rarely missed anything by ignoring them either. They’d say “how are you feeling today, James?”. That is, if they were a therapist. Therapists used first names to cultivate a false sense of friendship. He didn’t have the heart to tell them that no one called him James. Besides, if any of them had ever called him ‘bucky’ he thought he would’ve pulled his own hair out. Orderlies were more brusque. “Alright, Mr.Barnes, time to take your medication.” and then sigh loudly when he didn’t respond.

When Steve first walked into his unlocked door he said “I think I’m in the wrong room.”

Bucky made it a habit to memorize how people sounded so that he didn’t have to put in the effort of looking up when they came in. It also helped him chart everyone’s movements outside of the confines of his room. He knew the casual drag and scuff of rubber soles of the orderlies and how they got even more heavy and dragging as it got closer to the end of their shifts. He knew the quick and purposeful clacking of his psychiatrist’s heels. And the limping, listless, gait of the schizophrenic in the room next to his as he paced the length of his room endlessly, dragging his knuckles lightly against the wall, sending a barely perceptible vibration to the other side that Bucky felt on the back of his head when he sat with his back to the shared wall.

Steve’s foot falls were purposeful but every once in a while the bottom of his sneakers squeaked against the tile floor as he turned, paused, looked around. Bucky could see it without seeing him. Could envision the movements. Then after a brief pause, the next step was hesitant. Then fell back into an even, almost eerily equally spaced march.

He was a visitor, Bucky guessed. His sneakers sounded like they had laces. A lost visitor.

“I think I’m in the wrong room.”

When he entered Bucky was busy glaring out the window as if the sunny day had done him a grave personal injury. Without moving his head his eyeball scanned over the intruder briefly, taking in all he needed to know before returning his fixed gaze at the bluebird hopping along his window’s edge.

The intruder really did have laces in his sneakers- worn converses with a faded pattern of the American flag on them. He was wearing a belt too- those were forbidden as well, holding up khakis with a starch, checked shirt tucked in immaculately and fit snugly against a slim, tapered waist, stretched to accommodate broad, muscular shoulders. He was handsome. The word came out flat and meaningless in his own brain.

The man standing in the entrance shifted slightly on his feet then stuck his hands in his pockets.

“Well, have a good day.” he finally said and then turned and left. Bucky wanted to throw something at his retreating figure. He closed his eyes and imagined his door was huge and steel with a combination lock.

Bucky made a mental note of him.

The next time he saw him was two days later. Handsome had traded in the button up shirt for what appeared to be a child size t-shirt that looked in danger of ripping off his buff chest at any moment. He was answering the phone at the kiosk across from the station where Bucky was in line to receive his medication. So not a visitor, he noted. The phone was wedged between his shoulder and his ear as he used his hand to scribble down notes on a piece of paper. When he saw Bucky he beamed and waved his whole arm in the air frantically at him like they were best friends.

Bucky pretended not to see and swallowed the paper cup full of pills in one gulp without water. He heard the phone clicking back onto the receiver behind him as he turned to walk back to his room.

“Hey. Just wanted to say sorry about the other day- I walked into your room by accident. My bad.” handsome said to the back of Bucky’s head.

Bucky didn’t respond and handsome didn’t push it. Bucky appreciated that.

Bucky could hear handsome’s voice from his room. He could hear him laughing and speaking politely to other patients and nurses. His footsteps were distinct because he’d removed the laces from his American flag converses but continued trying to wear them even though it meant he practically couldn’t lift his feet off the ground without tripping. It was a stupid amount of dedication. He also showed a stupid amount of dedication in saying hello to Bucky every day.

He’d look at him and smile and nod his head and say “Hello.” Bucky would not say anything in return. And then Steve would continue with whatever he was doing. There was something very respectful and non invasive about the interaction.

It wasn’t that Bucky didn’t speak because it made him anxious. He didn’t speak very often because people rarely listened to what he had to say and often he felt as if he had nothing at all to say to people.

After a week, star-spangled-converse boy was upgraded from answering phones to collecting meal trays from patient rooms. Bucky picked at his food, emptied the mini milk carton accompanying the meal, sometimes cut everything into smaller pieces because it occupied time- with the plastic knife and fork with rounded edges it took real work.

Star spangled converse didn’t try to make conversation when he picked up the tray. And he didn’t sigh and criticize Bucky’s lack of appetite either which might’ve been refreshing if such comments had even registered to Bucky anymore.

The first converastion Bucky had had in over a year occurred because of those stupid, fucking, star spangled shoes.

Bucky was standing by his window, picking paint off the bars. They were painted white, as if that made them less menacing and prison-like. Bucky had been chipping away at the paint with his thumbnail for two months now and three bars were almost entirely paint free.

He’d been very focused on the task when handsome came in and he ignored his “hello” as was now their custom. But when the other man turned to leave the room with the tray he tripped over his own un-shoe-laced feet. Bucky turned at the first sound of the slip and was privileged to watch it all happen.

It was like seeing a cartoon character slip on a banana peel. The man’s body lurched forward unnaturally and soon the tray was flying through the air. There was literally gravy splashed onto the ceiling. His legs went out from under him, falling behind as his torso fell forward and smacked the ground first, his face following briefly after, his nose bouncing against the tile. The tray of food did a flip in the air (disturbingly, most of the gloppy hospital food seemed to stay attached to the plate) before landing face down on his back.

The man lay face down on the ground for a few moments, splayed out ridiculously. Bucky wondered vaguely if he was dead until his head shot up, nose slightly red at the tip but not broken. He sat up with a look of surprise and a face bright red with embarassment. He seemed to be processing what had just happened. He looked in confusion to the tray that slid off his back, to the floor (like it had betrayed him), then back up at Bucky.

Bucky did not move to his side. More out of shock than anything else. One hand was still raised to the bars of the window and his eyebrows were knit together in a look of bewilderment and mild concern.

Bucky’s head usually felt full of minute noises- computers and phones beeping in the nurse’s station, people’s chatter, announcements being made on intercom in the main hospital outside the psych ward…. For once everything seemed completely silent. As if at any moment appropriately placed cricket chirps would sound for comedic effect.

“….um.” Bucky said. He rarely said things involuntarily.

Handsome looked Bucky in the eye and after the ordeal he’d just been through, Bucky didn’t have the heart to break the eye contact with him as a show of contempt.

“Nobody has to know about this, right?” handsome said, his tone sounding… serious? Bucky couldn’t tell. He kept staring at him silently. Then the other man’s blue eyes crinkled up and his face broke into a bashful smile.  “Um… I’m Steve by the way.”

He was still sitting on the ground.

Bucky tapped his fingernail lightly on the bars of the window, scraping downward to flick off paint even as he did so. He was chewing the inside of his mouth, working up to speak.

“I have an extra shirt.” he finally said. It was the first time he’d strung words into a sentence in….. probably weeks.

Minutes later, “Steve” was stripping off his mashed potato and gravy stained t-shirt and Bucky was trying not to stare at his pecs. For once in his life he was almost glad that his depression meds made it nearly impossible to get a boner anymore but he couldn’t deny he was feeling _something_ looking at golden god. Steve seemed totally oblivious to this as he was using his own dirtied shirt to wipe off the remainder of food from the ceiling by standing on his tip toes and occasionally jumping, muscles flexing as he did. Bucky opened the wrong drawer to find his shirts three different times while trying not to pay attention.

“I think this is done for. Mind if I throw it in your trash?” Steve asked, looking with sad disgust at what used to be his shirt.

Bucky shrugged one shoulder. He tossed one of his own t-shirts to Steve who threw it on. Surprisingly it fit.

Steve seemed to have taken this bonding over shirt sharing as an invitation to hang around and as Bucky climbed back onto his bed and curled his legs up to his chest, Steve laid back in the arm chair next to the bed set out for visitors that Bucky never had. It was likely the stiffest most unused arm chair ever found outside a furniture store.

“So I never caught your name.” Steve said. There was a certain almost nervous twitchiness aspect of his disposition that seemed unsuitable for him. He didn’t carry the contemptuous and self satisfied air of a golden god.

Bucky didn’t provide his name. He was hoping the silent treatment would drive him off. It wasn’t that he actively disliked “Steve” it was just that even two minutes of social interaction were enough to warrant at least an hour long break for recovery.

“I live close to here.” Steve provided uselessly after a sufficiently awkward silence.

“Great.” Bucky said immediately regretting the sarcasm injected into his tone. Steve seemed to not notice it and beamed at him. Bucky rubbed his hand over his face and sighed as loudly as possible, still making a point of avoiding looking at Steve directly.

“What are you… do you… work here…?” Bucky finally managed when the silence became more awkard than the idea of having to talk.

“I’m volunteering. Well, I’m serving out a community service sentence. Not sure if that still counts as volunteering if it’s court ordered.”

“Community service sentence?” Bucky echoed vacantly, still glaring pointedly out the window.

“Yeah. Assaulted a police officer.” Steve chuckled as if it was a fond memory.

Bucky looked up for the first time. His eyes scanned over Steve, re examining the man who’d seemed pure boy scout until a moment ago, with skepticism and new found admiration. “… you don’t look the type.”

“Hey, don’t judge a book by it’s cover.” Steve said, one perfectly sculpted eyebrow quirking up. He laughed at Bucky’s wary non reaction. “The cops around here are all corrupt. They do more harm than protection. They’re _bullies_. I punched someone who I saw picking on someone else- it just happened that that person I punched was a cop. It’s not like I was doing it because I hate cops on principle.”

“Hm.” Bucky uttered without commitment.

“Are you from around here too?”

He shook his head as response.

“I came here… for my arm.” Bucky said very quietly, lifting the prosthetic as if to show him. “And then they kept me here… for psychiatric problems.”

Bucky glanced over to Steve to gauge his reaction and was relieved to see he wasn’t making the ‘oh shit, sorry about that, man, that really sucks that you only have one arm’ face that made him feel so nauseated.

“So… how long have you been stuck here then?” Steve asked. He seemed to be taking it all pretty well. Even Bucky’s therapists he felt looked at him with a degree of pity that made his stomach twist up. It was refreshing to not be seen as a wounded animal.

“Months.” Bucky said realizing he didn’t even know exactly how many.

“Christ.” Steve said. “You must be bored as shit.”

Swearing was nice. _Fuck, shit, Christ, hell, son of a bitch_. That was all Bucky seemed to think yet no one in the hospital used those words in front of him. It sounded as pleasant as music to his ears. He turned his head toward Steve.

His eyes were very blue and they were engaging Bucky in a way that made him uncomfortable. They were practically twinkling. And there was an almost proud smile on the man’s face- on someone else he might’ve called it smug. He was smiling because Bucky wasn’t glaring. He could feel on his own face that he wasn’t glaring because muscles that felt like they’d been tensed for a long time had relaxed and now ached slightly with overuse.

“I’ve got like… access to the outside world. Is there anything I can bring you that the orderlies won’t freak out about?” Steve asked.

Steve came back the next day with a stack of library books and a baseball which Bucky wasn’t sure he was allowed to have but that he immediately found himself throwing into the air and catching with his one good hand, eyes almost lit up in wonder watching the trajectory back into his palm, as Steve cleared his side table to make room for the books.

“You sure they’re okay with you giving me this?” Bucky asked, watching the ball arc almost brushing against the ceiling before landing neatly back into his hand.

“Well… that one I kind of snuck in in my pocket but I can’t see what harm it does. As long as you don’t go lobbing it at other patients or nurses.”

 “I don’t know if I can promise that.” Bucky said raising an eyebrow at him. A grin broke out on handsome’s face.

“Wowww. What was that? A joke? Shocking.”

“Didn’t think I had it in me?”

“I didn’t even know you could _talk_ until yesterday.” Steve chuckled.

Bucky had basically forgotten too.

He ran his fingers over the spines of the books Steve had brought. Most of them were old and leatherbound.

“Yeah, I didn’t really know what you liked.” Steve said, wincing a bit.

He picked up the thin book on the top. Complete Poems of Robert Frost.

Steve stood anxiously by his bedside with his hands in his pockets as Bucky flipped through it with one hand.

“…. okay?” Steve asked hopefully.

Bucky looked up and nodded once, curtly before looking back down. Steve left to get back to the other work he had to do. Bucky tentatively lifted the book to his face and took a deep inhale of the first object that wasn’t stained to scent like rubbing alcohol in a long time.

When he opened it to the first page he saw that the name Rogers, Steve was marked down several times in the list of people who’d taken the book out.

He absently rolled the baseball in a circular motion against the desk as he began to read.

_He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled, that lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust, but lies still pointed as it plowed the dust……_

Steve came in three days a week. He was the only person in the hospital that Bucky talked to. He made quick work of the library books, paying special attention to the Frost. After two weeks he had read the whole stack. He also knew more about Steve. He shared an apartment with a  female friend who he _wasn’t_ dating (he insisted that she and Bucky would probably get along though Bucky wondered how anyone could picture him getting along with anyone), he didn’t know how to use twitter and preferred movies to television, and he liked listening to indie folk music on his old school iPod nano when he rode the subway.

The first time Bucky smiled since coming to the hospital was when Steve told him his birthday was the fourth of July because it was totally ridiculous and fitting for the guy who’d tripped over his own star spangled converses.

The first time Bucky laughed since coming to the hospital was when he and Steve took turns attempting to make the hospital issued chicken nuggets bounce off the floor and were both successful.

“Closest park near here?” Bucky asked. It was the second day of the third week and they were playing the game where they talked about the ‘outside world’. Bucky asked the question and tossed the baseball across the room to where Steve was sitting in the arm chair.

“There’s one two blocks from here. It’s kind of small though and there’s a lot of litter.” Steve answered as he caught it and threw it back.

“Closest….,” Bucky thought, tossing the ball into the air a few times in his hand. “Mcdonalds?” he threw it back.

“There’s one right next door.”

Bucky caught.

“Knew there had to be one close because you always come in with an apple pie after lunch break.” he muttered.

“Two pies for one dollar is the _actual_ principle that America was founded  on.” Steve said seriously.

“Yeah, fuck liberty and freedom.” Bucky remarked dryly. “Anyway where’s the library?”

“That’s closer to my place. The woman who runs it is a little mad that between the two of us we’ve had Robert Frost out for like two months now.” Steve said throwing the ball back to Bucky.

“What poems do you like best?” Bucky almost muttered, a little embarassed by the question.

Steve shrugged, putting on the face of forced nonchalance he wore when he was trying to act like something wasn’t a big deal to him when it kinda was.

“The Road Not Taken is pretty good. I don’t know. I’ve read them all a lot. I had to memorize Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening when I was in middle school so that’s probably the first one I read.”

Bucky caught the ball thrown to him.

“I like the one about the soldier.” he said quietly.

 _He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled, that lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust_ …. echoed in his head automatically.

“Were you a soldier?” Steve asked.

“Yeah.” Bucky replied, feeling his throat close up around the word unexpectedly.

Steve didn’t ask anymore and Bucky threw the baseball back across the room.

The days that Steve didn’t come in felt long and torturous to Bucky. But when he told his therapists that he was feeling better lately it wasn’t a lie. He’d spent a lot of time in his own head which was trapped in his hospital room pretending that the world outside just stretched outward absolutely and indefinitely as a blank slate with nothing for him. Lately, he’d been craving McDonalds and walks in a littered park.

If we who sight along it round the world, see nothing worthy to have been its mark, it is because like men we look too near, forgetting that as fitted to the sphere, our missiles always make too short an arc.

“So did you grow up in this area?” Bucky asked the next week as they ate jello from plastic cups, sitting across from eachother. Steve had a long time ago started moving the arm chair up so that it was less than a foot away from where Bucky sat on the bed. He hadn’t really noticed him do it, just one day that had been how it was.

“Uh, yeah. I did. Actually I spent a lot of time in this hospital when I was a kid.” Steve said, suddenly giving deep concentration to scooping the remains of the radioactive green jello from the bottom of the cup.

“Why?”

“I was sickly when I was young. Just… weak everything I guess. When I was in highschool I fell into a coma… for almost two years.” when he noticed Bucky was staring at him intensely he smiled and shrugged his shoulders, looking almost bashful about it. ‘Silly me, falling into a coma!’.

“Are you okay now…?” Bucky asked.

“Yeah. I’m really healthy.” Steve beamed.

“You must hate being back in the hospital then.” Bucky muttered. For some reason that thought made him kind of sad. He didn’t know why, it wasn’t like the hospital was his personal home. And it wasn’t his fault he was there.

“I don’t mind.”

“It doesn’t make you depressed?”

“Nah. But if I start feeling depressed this is the right place to be for it, right?”

Bucky smirked slam dunked his jello cup into the trash. 

Bucky wasn’t sure how to tell Steve that he was kind of deeply in love with him. For Bucky love didn’t feel like some swell in a violin solo or tidal waves crashing in the ocean it felt more like the way rain drops perforated the surface of a lake- gentle but insistent. He felt it when Steve sat next to him on his bed and their shoulders brushed against eachother as they each used one of the earbuds connected to his iPod to listen to some “great new song I just found!” that was actually old as fuck. He felt it when he said something sarcastic and Steve’s laugh filled the whole room up stronger than sunlight. He felt it when Steve ran around doing work in the ward and came back to Bucky’s room at the end of the day, and slumped down in his armchair with a sigh of relief like it was his home.

 May transitioned into June silently and Bucky should have seen it coming.

“I’m on my last week and a half.” Steve said when they were playing go fish with the extremely beaten up card deck that was missing the four of clubs and the king of diamonds.

The words didn’t even register at first to Bucky. He heard them but it was like they were in a different language.

“….What?” he finally said about three minutes later.

“Oh, I asked if you had any threes.” Steve said innocently.

Bucky glared at him venomously over his hand. “Before that.”

“My community service sentence ends at the end of next week.” Steve’s face was serious enough that Bucky could tell he wasn’t completely oblivious. But he doubted he realized that he was destroying him.

“I’ll come back, though.” Steve quickly followed up with.

 _No, you won’t_ , Bucky said to himself silently.

“….right.” Bucky said out loud.

The next day for the first time in a while he hid his medication under his tongue and put it under his mattress.

_They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect the curve of earth, and striking, break their own._

When Steve left, a bunch of orderlies brought in a cake to the staff room and Bucky could hear them laughing and talking. He sat in his room and counted and arranged the pills he’d hoarded. For the first time in many weeks he actively and aggressively wanted to fucking die.

Steve said to him: “I’ll come back again next week though. You know that, right?”

and Bucky had said “Yep.” hollowly without looking at him.

Then he was gone and Bucky had nothing again. Just people who knew him as ‘James’ and ‘Mr.Barnes’.

Two days later he came back to his room after a group therapy session and found that the bars over his window had been repainted in his absence. He touched his fingers to them and came away with a very slight residue on his fingers from the fresh paint. He’d almost had one full bar picked clean before. He didn’t have the heart to start trying again even though the pristine, unblemished, white really bothered him.

Steve had returned the t-shirt he’d borrowed the first day they’d met, cleaned and neatly folded, and Bucky had kept it at the bottom of his drawer like a precious keepsake. He’d taken the library books the day before he’d left. Bucky had secretly hidden the Robert Frost and Steve hadn’t checked or noticed its absence.

He wondered why he wasn’t nearly as angry or sad as he wanted to be.

In a way he felt relieved that he didn’t have to pretend that things might be okay someday.

 _“They fall”_ ……. “ _rip”_ ……

 _“intersect”_.

When Steve showed up the next week, just like he’d promised to do, Bucky was already too fuzzy to be surprised.

He was half asleep, lying on his side and when his eyes fell half open he was looking Steve directly in the face. Steve had climbed into bed with him and they were facing eachother, bodies curled like a pair of parentheses, the space between them a word. Bucky blinked slowly, feeling too drowsy and nauseous to react.

“Hey.” Steve said softly.

“….hey.” Bucky finally croaked.

Steve’s smile felt kaleidoscoped, fragmented and swirling and obstructed by lens flares and Bucky’s own eyelids as he struggled to keep awake.

“….are you here… about the library book?” Bucky slurred.

Confusion. Registered on Steve’s face and then he smiled, ducking his head.

“Nah. Just you.”

Bucky laughed, closing his eyes and burying his face into his pillow. He felt tired and sweet and warm, drenched in honey.

“I forgot to tell you something before.” Bucky muttered, catching his breath.

“When?”

“All the time. Everyday.”

Steve laughed and he felt it vibrate on the bed.

“What did you forget to tell me?”

“I really like you.”

Silence. And then the feeling of Steve shifting on the bed, moving closer to Bucky, his socks brushing against Bucky’s bare toes. Steve’s hand gripped Bucky’s sweaty one.

“Is that all?”

When he opened his eyes Steve’s face looked serious. His lips were beautiful.

“I love you.” Bucky mumbled. “I don’t think it’s gonna work out but I love you.”

“Don’t say it won’t work out.”

“I’m really sad, Steve. And like, fucked up. And I need you too much.” Bucky closed his eyes, squeezing Steve’s hand as hard as he could which wasn’t very hard.

“That’s not how I think of you.” Steve said quietly. “I know you’re sad and fucked up but… that’s not all you are. You’re clever, and you appreciate things no one else does, and you make me laugh my ass off all the time even when you’re not feeling well. You’re the most important person I’ve ever met.”

Bucky laughed, feeling bile rise in his throat from the motion.

“Wow.” he said, his voice sounding different than his own, scratchy and weak. “Would now be a bad time to tell you then that I’ve taken a shit load of pills and I’m probably dying?”

The word “…..shit” from Steve’s mouth was distant. When he let go of his hand, Bucky wanted to throw a fit. But he couldn’t really move.

He didn’t remember what happened after that until he threw up the first time, he didn’t remember the consecutive times he threw up, or spending the next day asleep or what he dreamt about.

When Bucky woke up, Steve was asleep in the chair next to him.

“I want apple pie.” Bucky whispered. Steve’s eyes opened up and he smiled at him, looking almost as tired as Bucky felt.

“This isn’t going to be good for either of us.” Bucky said. “I’m pretty sure I’m just going to be a fucking shell of a human being for the rest of my life.”

Steve laughed once, rubbing his hand over his face.

“Yeah, well, believe it or not your bright and sunshiney optimism wasn’t what attracted me to you in the first place or anything so don’t worry on my behalf about it.”

Bucky chuckled. “What did then?”

“I guess you probably don’t believe in soul mates.”

“Fuck no.”

“It wasn’t like there was any one thing in particular. It was more like one day everything you did just felt important to me. And when you weren’t around to be sarcastic and grumpy, I felt like there was something missing.”

Bucky looked up at the ceiling. He was in a different room than the one he’d stayed in in the psych ward, one with dimmer lights. He closed his eyes.

“So can I keep coming to see you?” Steve asked.

“Yeah.”

It was another month and a half before Bucky left the hospital. He moved into Steve’s apartment. At first it was terrifying, coming to terms with the fact that there was so many parts of Steve that existed outside of the confines of the hospital room they’d shared together, that there were things others knew about him that Bucky didn’t, memories that he hadn’t been part of. Soon enough though, he found that that was part of the excitement.

Steve had been right, he and Natasha got along well and the first thing she did when he got back from the hospital was give him a hair cut.

The apartment was more like a home than Bucky had ever experienced. Steve worked three jobs and never complained. Natasha drank vodka on week nights and never seemed to get tipsy. There was a fire escape that quickly became Bucky’s favorite spot to sit and let his feet dangle off. They’d never met the people who lived in the building that faced theirs but they could see them through the windows and Steve and Natasha had names and made up biographies for every one of them. Every Sunday they did laundry and Bucky made himself a pest by lying in a pile of Steve’s warm laundry on the bed and watched him fold everything in perfect, neat, squares. The main room of the apartment had a huge window that sun came through and Bucky watched the sunrise every morning. As unbelievable as it was to him, he felt happy. Like he could burst at any moment. And when Steve kissed him on the mouth and wrapped his arms around his waist, he felt like he really could burst and be fine with it.

Things were good. Except the ridiculously huge late fee they had on the Robert Frost book.

_But this we know, the obstacle that chcked and tripped the body, shot the spirit on further than target ever showed or shone._

**Author's Note:**

> so I've never written for this fandom before or written these characters before so sorry lmao. I like nice comments I'm not looking for concrit so much and I'm not sure if I'll write this pair again but I had fun writing this one <3


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